Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @03:43PM
from the jury-is-out dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Cloud, a Pennsylvania case in which the RIAA's statutory damages theory — seeking from 2,200 to 450,000 times the amount of actual damages — is being tested, the US Department of Justice has just filed papers indicating that it is considering intervening in the case to defend the constitutionality of such awards, and requesting an extension of time (PDF) in which to decide whether such intervention 'is appropriate.' This is an early test of whether President Obama will make good on his promises (a) not to allow industry insiders to participate in cases affecting the industry they represented (the 2nd and 3rd highest DOJ officials are RIAA lawyers) and (b) to look out for ordinary citizens rather than big corporations."

It is just two sides of the same coin [youtube.com] and it has been for a long time, probably since WW2. When you vote it is nothing but Coke VS Pepsi, since both sides have gotten their bribes....er, lobbyist money before you ever get to make a choice. That is why we need a new system, perhaps letting us have multiple choices so that those that feel they "waste a vote" by voting third party would get a say?

And on a slight OT note, it kinda saddens me how Bill Hicks has been dead over a decade and his words are if anyt

Oh come on. I'm so sick of that argument. Every vote matters. I'm as fed up with mainstream Democrats and Republicans as anyone, both tend to have major flaws... That said, do you really think that McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden are equal? Even if I don't agree with them on many issues, I'll take someone with a constitutional law degree over a senile old man and a far-right nutjob any day.

That said, I've voted for a third party all of my life. I've never lived in a swing state, so my vote won't change

That said, do you really think that McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden are equal?

Of course I do. They both had critical flaws which made both of them unsuitable to be our next president. Once we get past that, it doesn't matter what else you can say about them. They were both equal: really bad.

They both had critical flaws which made both of them unsuitable to be our next president.

Okay, let's say that we expect a standard of 10, that's what we consider suitable. Neither a 3 nor a 7 meet the standard. That doesn't mean that 3=7.

Nothing in life is perfect. Inability to compromise is the downfall of Libertarians and Greens everywhere. Both have some great ideas (in my opinion, anything those two group agree on is as good as gold - social issues mainly), but the all-or-nothing attitude that they share keeps them from being taken seriously.

They both had critical flaws which made both of them unsuitable to be our next president.

Okay, let's say that we expect a standard of 10, that's what we consider suitable. Neither a 3 nor a 7 meet the standard. That doesn't mean that 3=7.

Well, to conservatives, Obama was a 3, and McCain was a 7. To liberals, McCain was a 3 and Obama was a 7. So if you add each one up, you get 10 for each, so it all works out and they are the same, in opposite ways.

Nothing in life is perfect. Inability to compromise is the downfall of Libertarians and Greens everywhere. Both have some great ideas (in my opinion, anything those two group agree on is as good as gold - social issues mainly), but the all-or-nothing attitude that they share keeps them from being taken seriously.

No, their downfall is not being able to break enough people away from the main parties, because those said individuals don't want to waste their dilute their vote and potentially have "the really bad one" win (ie I don't like McCain, and I really like Ron Paul, and I really, really hate Obama. If

Well, to conservatives, Obama was a 3, and McCain was a 7. To liberals, McCain was a 3 and Obama was a 7.

Except that it wasn't quite like that. McCain was a 3 and Obama was a 1. That was from some issues oriented poll I took at the start of the primaries that rated candidates based on 10 statements on 10 different subjects.

The only thing I agreed with Obama on was getting the US military the hell out of war and he's backtracked on that.

This is going to be worse than Bush who actually ran on a decent platform, only to do a total 180 once he got elected. An example of a promise gone bad: I wanted the US out

I'd have to disagree with your premise. I've been called a "far right wing whackjob", and McCain Palin simply didn't jive.

Bush in 2000 ran on a platform of smaller government, humble foreign policy, reducing spending and taxes. He ended up increasing budgetted spending more than any president in history, adjusting for inflation, and increasing debt mroe than any president in history adjusting for inflation, and increasing the size of government (he doubled the size of the department of education).

I guess that depends on which freedoms you'd rather lose. If you'd rather lose your 2nd and 4th amendment freedoms then Obama/Biden is your team. If you'd rather lose your 1st and 4th amendment freedoms then McCain/Palin should have gotten your vote. If you'd rather not lose any freedoms then I hope you found someone else to vote for.

I'm a gun owning, cryptography loving, card carrying member of the ACLU. I'm against "assault weapon" bans, and feel that the 2nd amendment should only extend to nuclear/biological/chemical weapons (with reasonable limitations to keep weapons out of the hands of the clinically insane). I have been teargassed and pepper sprayed for protesting outside of a "free speech zone". I've been searched without probable cause while citing Terry v. Ohio [wikipedia.org] - a case which ruled that cops can pat you down for weapons, bu

I'd hate to break it to you, but the 2nd amendment as imagined by the Republican party doesn't exist. Interpreting it as being a right to personal firearms without any qualifiers is unjustified. Felons, children and those not trained to use them safely not have any protections that guarantee them access.

Of course this is a false strawman. You are perpetrating the common caricature of the "gun nut".

People who fixate on "gun control" want nothing of the sort. They want to banguns outright buy are stymied by the current state of the law. They don't wantthe moderate version of your little caricature.

Of course this is a false strawman. You are perpetrating the common caricature of the "gun nut".

People who fixate on "gun control" want nothing of the sort. They want to ban
guns outright buy are stymied by the current state of the law. They don't want
the moderate version of your little caricature.

The brutal irony here is that you, yourself, are guilty of the exact fallacy you're calling out the GP for. The fact that you can denounce the GP for focusing on the extreme fringe cases and then, with barely pause for breath, explain that everyone against you is an anti-gun extremist is really breathtaking

Regardless of where we, as a society, decide is proper to draw the line between what we legally permit in this debate, please understand that opinions on this (as in any subject) lie on a vast spectrum. There's a middle ground between banning BBs and allowing personal nukes.

Of course this is a false strawman. You are perpetrating the common caricature of the "gun nut".

People who fixate on "gun control" want nothing of the sort. They want to banguns outright buy are stymied by the current state of the law. They don't wantthe moderate version of your little caricature.

So the other amendments in the Bill of Rights are individual rights, but the 2nd is a collective right given to a group?

You claim the first clause "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state", overrides the second which states "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

So People references militia in this situtaion but when the same clause is used in the 4th amendment it refers to actual individuals?

I'm going to disagree with the notion that the people who enjoyed the right to bear personal arms, who saw such arms used in the defense of libery, would then limit their distribution to a subset of people deemed "the militia"

A well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State, therefore the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

That's pretty cut and dried, it applies to regulated militias. Or in other words it applies only to those that are in a militia for the purposes of civil defense. All other gun rights are based upon which ones aren't taken away in law.

This correction is the way I have always interpreted the 2nd amendment, since a militia is not a standing army but a collection of citizens, the People, who in times of need must be able to defend their homes/communities/State. This clause in the US Constitution exists because it is the duty of the People to prevent the government from becoming corrupt and possessing too much power. The first course of action should be the ballot box, failing that then the jury box, and finally the ammo box if all else has failed. The US was founded in revolution, and the founding fathers believed strongly that We The People should be capable of revolution when the tyrannies of the government grow to unacceptable levels with no other recourse. These days, it would take a good deal of hardship and corruption to get the average American to accept the need for revolution, since those are rarely stable and comfortable events, but we may get there before too long.

Thomas Jefferson summed these sentiments up nicely,

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Not yet. Obama has lots of things to worry about, a big economic crisis, making government more open, a couple wars.......on the scale of importance of things this one is rather low. Heck, on my scale I'd rather have Obama worrying about the high rates of murder in Oakland, CA than worrying about an industry whose music isn't that great anyway.

So, we don't know if Obama has even looked at the issue at hand yet. All that has happened so far is that they've asked for more time to look at the issue, which

We chose Obama because he is a step in the right direction, a step towards openness, a step towards making friends with the rest of the world, and I would even say a step towards cleaning up corruption (that's the point of openness, right?). We knew he wasn't perfect, that's not why we chose him. We chose him because we wanted a change in direction; that can take time, and won't all happen with one man.

Thank you.

He's made some very good pledges about openness and anti-corruption measures, so now's the time for him to live up to them.

Intellectual property piracy: "This is theft"Less ambiguous were Holder's arguments for aggressive enforcement of U.S. intellectual property laws. In 1999, he joined the president of Adobe Systems at an event in San Jose, Calif., to announce that digital piracy had become a real problem and would become a "real priority" for the Justice Department.

"This is theft, pure and simple," Holder said at the time.

The Business Software Alliance, which counts Adobe Systems and Microsoft as members, applauded Holder's nomination this week. "He's smart, he's dedicated, open minded, he's very tenacious in pursuing the goals of the department," said BSA president Robert Holleyman. "We're very enthusiastic...He's a first rate choice."

Do not expect any change from the previous administration's stance on IP matters. It's going to be pretty much corporatist justice, if not more so.

Heck if you 'like' Holder for those views, during the Clinton administration, he promoted that Free Speech should be limited [newsbusters.org] . Heck, there are even videos of him on YouTube speaking about to this....

He's made some very good pledges about openness and anti-corruption measures, so now's the time for him to live up to them.

It may or may not be a token gesture, but it certainly makes me smile to read the White House's new Copyright Policy [whitehouse.gov]:

Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

I think that is a 'straw man' argument. I have never met a 'blind faith' Obama supporter. There probably is no such thing, except for maybe a very small number of very dumb people. We are offered a limited number of candidates, we vote for the one we feel is best, and we vote for the best. That's it. Don't try to disparage Obama supporters by mislabeling them 'blind faith' Obama supporters.

I am going by the reactions that I saw in the town hall meetings, including the recent one in Fort Myers, were people were asking him to pay their bills, get them a job, and generally solve all of their problems. You are correct that this is not "everybody" who voted for Obama, but there certainly was a lot of "irrational exuberance" IMHO, displayed in the media reporting of the party conventions and town hall meetings. I suppose I was just frustrated with all of the apologists out there.

Have you not noticed or already blanked-out the fact that it was Obama's new administration that placed these RIAA lawyers in the DOJ in the first place? A Slashdot reminder of that fact was linked right in the article above.

"We chose Obama because he is a step in the right direction, a step towards openness, a step towards making friends with the rest of the world, and I would even say a step towards cleaning up corruption (that's the point of openness, right?)."

Goodness, I wish I had your youthful optimism about the world.

*Sigh*....well, just give it a few years, with experience and seeing how it all works, that optimism and hope for the world fades. Enjoy it while you have you illusions. After that, you learn to just look

We chose Obama because he is a step in the right direction, a step towards openness, a step towards making friends with the rest of the world, and I would even say a step towards cleaning up corruption (that's the point of openness, right?)."

Goodness, I wish I had your youthful optimism about the world.
*Sigh*....well, just give it a few years, with experience and seeing how it all works, that optimism and hope for the world fades. Enjoy it while you have you illusions. After that, you learn to just look out for yourself.

Well I agreed with that comment a hundred percent. And I'm 60. You can call my optimism dumb, but you can't call it youthful.

Voting for either "side" in this broken two party corporate governance is a waste, the best you can hope for is that the guy who wins will fuck you less than the other guy.

that is unless we take control of our federal government by utilizing our state power, but who really paid attention to the local elections? Last time I checked, they were installed by the same corporations/banks that paid for McCain AND Obama!

Don't take my word for it, look it up yourself at opensecrets.org [opensecrets.org]

Oh God... people in Florida can't even press the correct button, and you expect them to understand the Schulze Method?? IRV is great because any idiot can understand and follow it... which unfortunately is a requirement.

The problem isn't the two-party system. That is a symptom. We as a nation have allowed the federal government to assume more and more of our states' powers in return for pledges to "fix" various societal ills. We have all forgotten the intention of the founders/framers to protect us from an overreaching federal bureaucracy, either through laziness or lack of education.

I would much rather have my state and federal taxes reversed, i.e., pay thousands to my state but only hundreds to the fed, that way my money would work for me and those near me, rather than to help subsidize loads crap 3000 miles away. It would also take some of the power out of the US Congress and make state senators and representatives more important.

Let me get this straight. Obama, the man of the people, has a Dept. of Justice filing an amicus brief in order to HELP the extortionate RIAA win their case?

No, the Obama Administration's DOJ is considering filing an amicus brief supporting statutory damages even when they greatly exceed demonstrable actual damages. While that theory being struck down in the instant case might be bad for the RIAA and no one else immediately, if such a precedent were established, it would greatly limit the use of statutory damages in most of the places where they are used, which are often in places where the easily quantifiable portion of direct harms is very small, but the diffuse impact may be very large. This does not benefit only, or even primarily, big corporations, its very common in laws that principally benefit individuals against big corporations (like many consumer protection laws) and other powerful interests (civil actions under many civil rights laws).

Amicus briefs are often filed by parties whose interest in legal precedent that could be set is largely tangential to the interests of the parties in the case; if parties have a direct interest in the case, they probably ought to be intervenors, not amici.

TORTS are supposed to right wrongs, not be a payday. So it is logicaland obvious that damages awarded in lawsuits have some relationship toactual proven harm. That's that civil courts are for: to prove harm andresolve the harm.

They aren't meant for social crusading.

Any ambulance chaser who isn't fodder for Lawyer jokes would tell you that.

If there is a public policy reason to FINE people and corporations thenthe law should allow for that explicitly. It should not be done as a backdoor hack for something that isn't meant for the use you're putting it to.

Want megabuck fines for piracy? Fine, make it a proper criminal offense withthe state being the only entity with standing and a proper burden of proof.

Something that is not serious enough for society to pay attention to and takeseriously should not have severe draconian consequences attached to it.

TORTS are supposed to right wrongs, not be a payday. So it is logical
and obvious that damages awarded in lawsuits have some relationship to
actual proven harm. That's that civil courts are for: to prove harm and
resolve the harm.
They aren't meant for social crusading.
Any ambulance chaser who isn't fodder for Lawyer jokes would tell you that.
If there is a public policy reason to FINE people and corporations then
the law should allow for that explicitly. It should not be done as a back
door hack for something that isn't meant for the use you're putting it to.
Want megabuck fines for piracy? Fine, make it a proper criminal offense with
the state being the only entity with standing and a proper burden of proof.

Well said, jedidiah. Thank you. That is the issue that will be argued in SONY v. Tenenbaum, when the First Circuit sorts out whether the argument can be streamed over the internet. It is a very important discussion we need to have about the RIAA's interpretation of copyright law.

isn't the government obligated to defend any laws that are being called unconstitutional?

No.

Or if they have discretion in the matter, what discretion are they allowed?

Virtually unlimited discretion. They can refrain if they think the statute may indeed be unconstitutional, or if they just don't like it, or if they think they shouldn't intervene in a private dispute, or if they just think they have better things to do with their limited resources than gang up with the RIAA against some college student.

While I am sure that it did not hurt Halliburton to have Cheney as Vice President, your argument is defective because Halliburton has been getting no-bid contracts for a very long time, including plenty of lucrative no-bid contracts under the Clinton administration. If Halliburton's contracting largesse is the result of malfeasance, then you will have to paint both Democrats and Republicans with that brush, as they both freely participated in that behavior in their respective administrations.

In fairness to Halliburton, one of the reasons they get these types of no-bid contracts from dozens of governments around the world is that there are very, very few companies that actually do what they are doing for these governments on the scale they do it, and Halliburton has specialized in filling that particular demand. Realistically, for some of the contracts that Halliburton gets there are no legitimate competitors and everyone knows it, making a bidding process a bit of waste, particularly if the matter is urgent. On the upside, there are now a couple different other companies trying to move in on Halliburton's business.

I have never understood the obsession with painting Halliburton as the ultimate Republican evil instead of a much more accurate shade of gray that both Democrat and Republican administrations shovel money to that sometimes gets these contracts because there really is no reasonable alternative under the constraints. We can't fix the world if we are in denial about the reality of it, and Halliburton is just another big government contractor like numerous others that was well positioned for the kind of contracting work that resulted from the nominal War on Terror.

the problem I see is that Bush while supported corporations seemed truly to protect the country and did what he thought best. So far all I see is Obama ceding authority and decisions to others. He seems adept at not taking action himself or taking responsibility. He is after face time and "credit" but credit without owning anything. The stimulus bill was handed over to Pelosi and Reid and he flew around campaigning with doom and gloom if it wasn't signed. Bush just stayed either out of sight or just sa

"fooled" is a silly word for it. I voted for him, and I'm a (moderate) republican! I know he'll do stuff I don't like.... but shit, McCain/Palin was just too scary... When the republicans hoist up someone who has a plan for their office besides attacking abortion and gays I'll vote for them again. Besides, the boundaries between the parties are put up by the parties anyway. There's little real difference there when you look at the actual politicians and not at the stances they hold up for the media.

When the republicans hoist up someone who has a plan for their office besides attacking abortion and gays...

Citation please.

OK, Republicans are against abortion, and for the most part, always will be. You see, we see it as killing babies. You may not think it's a baby, but a simple DNA test will prove that it really is a separate human than either the mother or the father. So, yeah, we see it as killing babies and will continue to stand against it. Neither a mother, nor anyone else should have the "right" to kill anyone else that is no threat and has committed no crime.

Besides, after eight years of a Republican president, many of those with a Republican controlled congress, we still have abortions and gays. So....

You see, we see it as killing babies. You may not think it's a baby, but a simple DNA test will prove that it really is a separate human than either the mother or the father.

I never said I was pro-choice, just that I don't want that to be the FOCUS of their platform. I mean, they really can't come up with more important stuff to discuss with all the problems we have these days? As for your request for citation... okay, so maybe I exaggerated a little bit, but I still felt like they were focusing on all the wrong things for about 40% of their campaign. To be fair, it was mostly Palin. I liked McCain for the most part.

That said, if Dennis Kucinich were running, he'd have my vote hands down. He's liberal and not in the pockets of the **AA, and in my opinion he's the guy who would make the best president.

As someone who lived inside the city limits of Cleveland when 'Dennis the Menace' told off CEI and thus set the stage for Cleveland's default, I can categorically classify him as an idiot. The 'competition' that was 'provided' by Munincipal Light was a few cents cheaper than CEI's rates, but it pissed CEI off bigtime bec

Come on, really?!? Believing Obama isn't in the pockets of Hollywood (incl. the MPAA and RIAA), trial lawyers, and the unions is as naive as believing Goerge Bush wasn't in the pockets of Wall Street, big oil, and the bible-thumpers.

Every politician is someone's bitch. Hollywood most assuredly produced the carton of cigarettes to buy Obama. And you can bet that they expect results.

The thing is, he is president right now, he could say "Thanks for the donations...SUCKERS" and then vote for the people. A popular president not getting re-elected is highly unlikely - even if he doesn't have a huge donation base...he has the WH megaphone for free (or at least free for him).

No he can't. He not only needs those donations for his reelection in 2012, but his party needs them for Congressional elections in 2010, 2012, and 2014. Thumbing his nose at them would not only jeopardize his election efforts, but the future of his party's long-term relationship with that particular sugar daddy.

80% of Slashdot bought into HopeyMcChange's schtick. It is going to be fun (in a tragic comedy sense) watching the disillusionment after a couple of years of increasingly violent denials that Yup, he is just a politician.... and while possessing great oratary skills not all that bright in the end.

But to put off that awakening watch the NewSpeak in the media as they try to explain away the fast breaking campaign promises. Bipartisan, open, new politics turned

I don't get it, where do you people get that everyone thought of Obama as a messiah? I don't know anyone that did and I know a lot of people that voted for him.

No one in their right mind thought Obama would solve all the problems but that he would cease the landslide that Bush was causing and so far this seems to be true with the closing of Gitmo.

Of course Gitmo isn't closed yet so the jury is still out there.

As for the stimulus bill you seem to be confused about who's pushing for what. The vast majority of Americans are asking for a giant pork bill. Whether that is good or bad for the population should be debated heavily as there are far reaching consequences to borrowing that much money which was previously something the former administration liked doing. Obama never asked for 800 billion, that all came from Pelosi as you say and I've seen a number of republicans acting quite childishly about how it is being developed without their input. If they didn't act like such babies about it I'd be more inclined to believe them or at least feel bad for them since it's good to have opposing viewpoints in a debate.

Of course the idea of borrowing several billion dollars to give people a tax cut is also quite absurd as we have to pay that money back somehow which will be in higher taxes down the road. This is of course what the republican agenda is all sore about right now as they want more tax cuts.

I think we can all agree that fear and panic are emotions that should not be involved in bill making especially with a stimulus bill as large as the one on the table. It's forcing all of congress to move too quickly and they will end up making even more poor decisions. Remember, congress had an even lower approval rating than Bush did and for good reason! I wish I could say Pelosi was helping to change that but she is just as ineffective as the republican she replaced.

> Of course the idea of borrowing several billion dollars to give people a tax cut is also quite absurd..

No, it's worse. We are in a crisis which everybody agrees is a credit crunch, credit isn't available and it is causing pain everywhere. So what is their answer? Borrow a Trillion dollars and give it to every democratic wish list item ever floated. The problem was the housing bubble (chiefly caused by Democrats, even Bill Clinton fessed up on that one) blew out and scuttled the banks who had writte

It's the same media who's played down the tax scandals that have plagued Obama's picks and who have been spinning Obama's blatantly partisan politics as being "the GOP's fault."

Look, I know it's the summer of '94 all over again for conservatives, and your juices are flowing with insurgent glee, but the "liberal media" myth has been pretty thoroughly debunked and is, in fact, as old as the nostalgia you're currently experiencing.

Oabama's got enough real deficiencies and faults that we don't need to be wasting time making shit up.
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Going to various Obama web sites where public submission of comments are facilitated is exactly where people should go to voice their view on these matters. If it is clear to Obama that people are watching and responding, he will have a much more difficult time ignoring the situation and the people and will have an even more difficult time going back on his word. People are still up in the air about Obama's credibility and one negative is worth more than a hundred positives and I know he is well aware of that fact. This early in his presidency, he cannot afford to let his credibility slip. He can't make excuses. He has little choice but to respond as he would be expected.

Are you going to allow ex-RIAA lawyers, now members of your Department of Justice staff, intercede on behalf of the RIAA in cases where they are finally being brought to task in regard to their unconstitutional attacks on ordinary citizens?

You did know that the RIAA hired companies to act as Private Investigators in states they held no credentials to act as such, right?

You did know that the RIAA has brought copyright infringement cases against 80+ year old grandmothers who never had a computer?

You did know that the RIAA has brought copyright infringement cases against deceased people, then tried to get the 10 year child of said deceased individual alone to scare them into saying they did something, when they may or may not have?

You did know that the RIAA has continuously cried about losses (to piracy) during years that they've made their highest levels of profit, which was mostly due to people who have lent songs for others to listen to (much like yesterday's radio)?

You did know that the RIAA has (as a conglomerate of Recording Companies) continually raises the flag that piracy hurts the recording artists, which habitually it's the recording companies that immorally force contracts onto artists that strip them of most of the money they could make - such as charging them for media, distribution (shipping) fees and breakage - for ELECTRONIC downloads of their songs - which have NO media, NO distribution fees, and NO breakage?

The RIAA (and it's movie industry equivelent, the MPAA) are abominations to the citizens of this country, whose outdated business models leave them gasping for breath, trying to find any way they can possibly survive, which has led them to file law-suit after frivolous law-suit (nearly every time someone has stood up to them with any merit whatsoever, they've dropped the cases), tying up the court systems, in an effort to get the government to force the public to keep funding these dinosaur business relics which are better off extinct.

My main problem with this site in particular is that they count broken promises as "in progress" or "compromise", and they add new promises all the time. This doesn't just track promises made during the campaign: if he says (as president) he'll do something next week, and then he does it, it counts as a "Promise Kept". This ensures that their numbers always skew to the "Promise Kept" side.

That said, I find the site entertaining, if irritating. I just hate the idea that anyone things it's "Fair" or "Neutral".

I am surprised they aren't getting a bailout as well. The RIAA are professional fear mongers. With the economy in shambles this is their time to shine. I expect it to get worse.

In fact I see this moving to the SCO model of business. They will just give up on music, and just sue people for money. It worked for them. We can only hope, as at least that way the RIAA dinosaur would go extinct and the music industry could move forward into the present reality.

I agree this is a great concern. The article would do well to cite these promises, though. I do recall these being brought up, but it would be nice to post the evidence. Anyone have a link to support for these claims? So far I've found this:

Obama repeatedly made sure that we knew that his campaign was funded entirely by us the citizens, not lobbyists or businesses. Therefore he should be using the DOJ to protect us from the RIAA, not the other way around. I sure hope he can fix the economy, because this is a strike against him.

If they don't also still work for the RIAA are we sure these lawyers actually even give a damn about the RIAA? Unless they have stocks and shares or whatever in the RIAA companies then what's in it for them if they no longer work for them?

It is possible that these lawyers were just doing it for the money and don't actually give a damn about the company they were working for.

Does anything have anything more damning than that they used to work for the RIAA? do they still? are they receiving money or incentives still from the RIAA?

Cheney wasn't just an employee of Halliburton, he was on the board of directors, that means he was very strongly tied to the company and had strong interests in it. He was also a neo-con and Halliburton was a vessel for him to help push his political agenda of American strength and corporate interest worldwide. There was also some evidence that Cheney still had some ties to Halliburton whilst the government was pouring money into it.

This is why I asked about the lawyers, because there doesn't seem to be any

Just because Party A is an "ordinary citizen" and Party B is a "big corporation" doesn't mean that Party A should be able to harm Party B with impunity.

NewYorkCountryLawyer, for all the good work he is doing, seems to include verbiage like this in almost every post that makes it to the front page. Over and over... the industry is suing "ordinary folks"... they should stop suing "ordinary folks"... evil big corporation vs. noble, innocent ordinary folks...

I happen to be in the camp that the historical reasons for copyright are no longer extant and that massive reform should be done. But this verbiage disturbs me.

Our legal system should provide facilities for party A to address grievances with party B, whether B is big and A is small, or vice versa. It shouldn't be the goal (as the verbiage seems to suggest) that the legal system should be rigged to favor the smaller party in a dispute.

I would agree with you if it were that simple. The problem is that the legal system evolves and favors those who have the resources to contend in court.

A regular person does not have resources to fight civil lawsuits that may last indefinitely. It is not in an individual's best interest (typically) to drag out a proceeding and exhaust every legal option in pursuit of a victory. A big corporation, however, does and can benefit from it.

If the system were rigged towards the smaller party, I agree it probably would be equally injust (see the current state of patent law).

It would probably be helpful to the average working man if judges limited the scope of the better-funded party's arguments in a case. But that wouldn't make it just.

Here's how I understand the motion. Can a lawyer comment if the DOJ's request is just standard procedure? On October 29, 2008, the Defendant (Denise Cloud) challenges the constitutionality of the statutory damages section of 17 U.S.C 504c. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.1a says that the Attorney General can intervene in any constitutional challenge within 60 days. This motion requests more time for the DOJ to study whether they should intervene beyond the 60 days. The DOJ may have 3 outcomes: They can reject the challenge. They can allow the challenge to proceed and not interfere. They can also support the challenge.

It is a new administration so we can't be sure which way they will lean. However it maybe that this administration is just more diligent and attentive than the previous administrations to this issue. The Bush administration seemed to be more focused on other legal issues.

You have two lawyers with proven track records of a) using evidence that was obtained illegally, and b) suing people with no evidence at all, c) suing the wrong people, and d) participating in a campaign of frivolous litigation.

The only way the administration could have done worse was to appoint Jack Thompson.

You have two lawyers with proven track records of a) using evidence that was obtained illegally, and b) suing people with no evidence at all, c) suing the wrong people, and d) participating in a campaign of frivolous litigation.

Yeah but other than that, what do you have against them? Picky, picky.

Anyone think that's it's a bit too coincidental that this was announced on the same day the stimulus bill was signed and troops were ordered to Afghanistan? Pretty much guaranteed to not get a single lick of major press.

Oh yes, because the Republicans have done so much to help the little people from the big business RIAA.
Both parties are on the side of the RIAA. If you thought a vote for Obama would change the RIAA legal battles, you were sadly mistaken.

Well we know that the Bush DOJ was anxious to intervene on the RIAA's behalf. We don't yet know that about the Obama DOJ. This will be an interesting test.

Maybe you can do your best to clean up your own back yard first instead of waiting for the government to do something. If all these supporters who voted for Obama refused to play either big oil or big media's game than the issues involved would cease to exist. It's only going to take a small portion of the population to take an active (read: economically fueled) interest in these problems and a shift will start to happen.

It's a shame that under Bush we were starting to see a swing away from oil by ethanol

...seeking from 2,200 to 450,000 times the amount of actual damages...

I've only seen up to 8000, anything over 9000 would just be ridiculous.

:)

But seriously, the actual damages are around 35 cents per download. (70 cent wholesale price minus ~35 cents expenses=35 cents lost profits). The now discarded Jammie Thomas verdict was 23,000 times the actual damages (9250 per song file).

Interestingly, when the record companies are defendants [blogspot.com] they sing a different tune, complaining that even 10 times the actual damages is unconstitutional.

The DOJ is just asking for some more time in which to decide whether intervention is appropriate. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. The more time they have to make up their mind, the more likely it is they will make the right decision and do the right thing, which in this case would be to do nothing and take no position and leave it up to the Judge to sort out whether the RIAA's theory is unconstitutional.

the Justice Department has to support the laws as written before the courts

Yes but every member of the Justice Department, and indeed every attorney, takes an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. Not a particular provision, or interpretation of a provision, of the Copyright Act. I.e., while we are bound to protect and defend "the law", the chief "law" we are bound to protect and defend is the Constitution of the United States. The United States Supreme Court has held that punitive damages which exceed by more than nine times the actual damages are presumptively unconstitutional. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Northern District of California, and the Eastern District of New York have held that statutory damages may well be subject to the same principle. No cases have held to the contrary. And two excellent law review articles have argued forcefully that the statutory damages scheme of the Copyright Act, providing for MINIMUM damages of $750 per infringement, is in fact unconstitutional as applied to the micropayment p2p file sharing cases -- i.e. if each 99-cent song file creates a $750 to $150,000 liability.

So the DOJ should stay far away from defending this nonsense. They have much more important things to do than to ensure that college students be exposed to damages which even the courts recognize are ludicrous. See, e.g., the last 3 or 4 pages of Judge Davis's decision [blogspot.com] in Capitol v. Thomas.

To NYCL:
Thank you for putting a relevant ad on your page (the one to the independent download shop). That was the first internet ad I've intentionally clicked on in years.
We should be so lucky that all sites would do that.

Funny you should say that because just a couple of days ago I decided to take down the Google AdSense ads, which are supposed be directly relevant to my site's content but just aren't, and to start concentrating on ads that are consistent with the subject matter of the blog. Also, I came to the conclusion that the ads for independent music downloads are the most important thing I can feature, since the more independent music that is bought, the sooner the RIAA will go down. Meanwhile, I have the classified